Amazon is going to have to wait a bit longer to discover whether its 2012 application for the gTLD .amazon will remain rejected.

ICANN’s board of directors at the weekend discussed whether to revive the application in light of the recent Independent Review Process panel ruling that the bid had been kicked out for no good reason.

Instead of making a firm decision, or punting it to the Government Advisory Committee (as I had predicted), the board instead referred the matter to a subcommittee for further thought.

The newly constituted Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee, which has taken over key functions of the Board Governance Committee, has been asked to:

review and consider the Panel’s recommendation that the Board “promptly re-evaluate Amazon’s applications” and “make an objective and independent judgment regarding whether there are, in fact, well-founded, merits-based public policy reasons for denying Amazon’s applications,” and to provide options for the Board to consider in addressing the Panel’s recommendation.

The notion of a “prompt” resolution appears to be subjective, but Amazon might not have much longer to wait for a firmer decision.

While the BAMC’s charter requires it to have meetings at least quarterly, if it follows the practice of its predecessor they will be far more frequent.

It’s possible Amazon could get an answer by the time of the public meeting in Abu Dhabi at the end of next month.

ICANN’s board did also resolve to immediately pay Amazon the $163,045.51 in fees the IRP panel said was owed.

The .amazon gTLD application, along with its Chinese and Japanese versions, was rejected by ICANN a few years ago purely on the basis of consensus GAC advice, led by the geographic name collisions concerns of Peru and Brazil.

However, the IRP panel found that the GAC advice appeared to based on not a great deal more than whim, and that the ICANN board should have at least checked whether there was a sound rationale to reject the bids before doing so.